Those of you who have followed the evolution of the TITAN project on the pages of Roger-Wilco will be familiar with the aims and development methodology of this trend-setting EC 7th framework project. Building on the achievements of Airport Collaborative Decision Making systems (A-CDM), TITAN had set out to show how aircraft turnaround can be further optimized to the benefit of all partners concerned. TITAN was special also because its results were considered as important input for the airport collaborative decision making related projects of SESAR itself.
After three years of intense activity, TITAN has come to an end in November, marking this milestone with a final workshop that was held in Palma de Mallorca. Before you get funny ideas about the choice of location for the workshop, I hasten to add that this beautiful Spanish resort island was picked mainly in recognition of the valuable and voluntary contribution of Palma de Mallorca airport throughout the project.
The workshop was very well attended and it was nice to see that in addition to the customary airport and handling agent experts, industry and research establishment representatives were also in evidence, a clear indication of the significance of what TITAN was aiming to achieve.
In the course of the workshop, the main features of TITAN were presented. Participants could learn how service orientation was implemented, an absolute first in European CDM, how the TITAN model was developed and validated, providing a perfect basis for checking out and shaking down the TITAN concept of operations. The development of the TITAN tool represented a partial implementation of the concept which was however plenty enough to show what a full-fledged TITAN can do to make turnarounds even more predictable and an integral part of the aircraft trajectory.
Among all the exciting elements of the TITAN project, the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) was of course one of the most interesting for the various partners. No matter how novel or exciting a new idea or concept is, if it proves impossible to create a credible and positive CBA to support it, it will never become reality. The presentation on the TITAN CBA at the workshop made it abundantly clear that TITAN does not suffer from not being cost effective. While the achievable benefits are not equally high for all the partners, investing in TITAN makes eminent sense for them all.
A lot of attention was devoted to how TITAN was going to be integrated in the air transport system. In this context experts had to look at not only the current and expected technical environment, but also the special needs of the new, land-side partners, most of whom have never had to co-operate so closely with the air traffic management operation. The innovative nature of TITAN is based partly on the use of information readily or easily available from such land-side partners and hence obtaining their cooperation and ensuring proper data quality also from them was a key to success.
Once the workshop was over, most everyone agreed that TITAN has fulfilled on its promises. An advanced concept for keeping an eye on the turnaround and a tool to demonstrate that the concept works, all supported by a positive CBA… what more could anyone ask from the 11 companies and three years of work that went into making TITAN ready for the mainstream?
It will now be the task of SESAR to incorporate the output of TITAN into their own work and at some future point of industry to create a TITAN tool that incorporates all the features dreamed up by the original TITAN consortium.
TITAN is ready to deliver…